Journal of History and Culture Journal of History and Culture

j o u r n a l o f h i s t o r y a n d c u l t u r e
between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois, essentially a debate between an industrial/trade education and a
liberal arts education. Washington believed in education in the crafts, industrial and farming skills, and the cultivation
of the virtues of patience, enterprise and thrift. 2 On the contrary, Du Bois believed that a liberal arts education was
more important than an industrial education. 3
After 1865, Blacks could attend their own grammar and normal schools; then they could enroll in Black
high schools. The French concept of an “école normale” was to provide a model school with model classrooms to teach
model teaching practices to its student teachers. 4 Washington, however, identified these Black normal schools as
inadequately equipped, illogically distributed, and of varying efficiency and grade. 5 W.E.B. Du Bois also believed
that these Black schools were doing little more than industrial training, and the public schools were training but a
third of Black students who ought to be in them and training these too often poorly. 6 Therefore, the debate began
with Washington’s and Du Bois’s views on whether Blacks should be taught by Black teachers in their own normal
schools or whether they should be taught in liberal arts colleges with the same rights as Whites. Either way, because
of the low percentage of licensed Black architects, schools of architecture have not worked very much for Blacks
— resulting in what is called the “edumaction” of Blacks.
History reveals that schools for higher training of Black students were later developed to broaden the
development of Blacks. 7 This development was reached with different degrees of speed in different institutions:
Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia, started in 1861; Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, started in 1871,
Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama, started in 1881; and Spelman Seminary began in
Atlanta, Georgia, in 1881. Upon recommendation of Hampton founder Sam Armstrong, Booker T. Washington was
appointed as the first leader of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. Washington believed that education
was a crucial key to Blacks rising within the social and economic structure of the United States. He rose into a
nationally prominent role as spokesman and leader for Blacks. The four schools—Tuskegee Institute, Hampton
Institute, Fisk University, and Spelman Seminary—focused on what Washington termed “maintaining the standards”
of minor training by giving teachers and leaders the best practicable training, and above all, furnishing the Blacks’
world with adequate standards of American culture. By 1900, some 34 Black Americans had completed one year
or more of an industrial trade from one of the four schools.
After slavery, the industrial system was developed that taught Black men an industrial trade (i.e., master
builder training) and completed a variety of building projects. 8 After slavery in the New World, many Blacks
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